Hits on cd

I was looking back yesterday tidying things up at clippings from such magazines as Smash Hits!, Big which was a music, movies and tv star teen magazine that came out before Bliss and Sugar with pictures on Adam Ant, 5 Star and New Kids on the Block that you pinned to your dorm or home bedroom wall.
It got me thinking back to how we listened to music back then.
When in 1983 the compact disc was introduced commercially in North America and Europe, there were a number of concerns beyond of that of the then high price for the actual players for those who had more than $700 to throw at this new technology.
One was the catalogue which on launch was minuscule and pretty expensive as I well remember and the other was connected with it was let's say you're a dealer so what could use to demonstrate it to broad customer base?
Luckily Philips, co-creators of the format through its then Phonogram music arm had the answer in form of a short lived compact disc series called simply Hits on CD

It was launched in early 1984 taking 14 to 16 tracks from the in print cd catalogue they owned in Europe one track per artist across a wide range popular music from Techno pop to Hard rock to show off the medium.
Nice touches included information about the album it was from and catalogue number and using full length versions of tracks from Trio to Kiss and all points between.
It was I believe the first place on compact disc the non album single Twisting By The Pool by Dire Straits was issued and one the few places anything by the very short lived trans pop star Marilyn was ever issued on cd.
I own the first four which work well with some of my other original 80's  compilations -hello Now '86! - and do sound very really good no doubt because they use little post studio processing in the way so many do today.